Time Outside

We have had such beautiful weather this spring! After the cold winter months, it is always a delight to spend time outside again. I love sitting in the hammocks and benches around the yard, and breathing in fresh air while watching the boys play outdoors. I am so grateful that we live on the ranch, because it is peaceful and quiet without having any close neighbors, and there's plenty of room for the boys to roam and play and have adventures. 

Kanyon's favorite thing to do in the yard this spring is play baseball, which is quite surprising, because he's never shown any interest in the sport before! Kanyon goes through spurts with his desires--he'll stick with one activity and focus on it for a long time, then he'll all of a sudden switch activities. For example, the last couple of years in the summer time, he's really been into jumping on the trampoline. Then this fall and winter, his focus was shooting basketballs in the hoop--he practiced both at home and at school (and he was getting quite good at it, too). Then one day in April while I was working in the raspberry patch in our garden, I found a ball and threw it in the boys' dirt pile (which is where the backyard toys seem to gather). The next day, Kanyon found the ball, and he's been having me pitch the ball to him multiple times a week so that he can practice hitting it. We usually play in the evenings for a while, and he's gotten pretty good at throwing the ball back to me with good aim, and his batting skills have improved, too. He's just like Ammon: he's left handed while holding baseball bats and golf clubs, but right-handed for everything else. 

One Saturday in April, the boys worked together in our dirt pile on a creative group project. They dug a giant hole and then built a trench that connected it to the ditch. They filled buckets of water from the nearby ditch, and then carried them over to the hole and dumped them into the hole. They wanted the hole to be filled up with enough water that the trench would carry the water back to the ditch. Unfortunately, the trench that they dug wasn't deep enough, and the hole was SO huge, that the water level never got high enough to do that, despite the numerous trips they made back and forth between the water hole and the ditch. It kept them busy for quite a while, though, and I liked seeing them being creative and working together on a common goal!

That's a mighty big water hole in our dirt pile!

The trench is in between Jonah's legs

The boys aren't afraid to get muddy! (or to be hosed off afterwards, either!)

We have lots and lots of different gnomes around our yard, and apparently Micah decided to strategically put mud on one of the gnomes the same day they built the trench. I noticed the muddy gnome the following day (after the mud had already dried) and pointed it out to Josh, who thought it was funny. I never would've thought to add mud to this gnome's bottom, but my boys always surprise me with the ideas they come up with!

The gnome apparently had an accident all down his backside and onto the rock!